folded
it away--a disconsolate, disillusioned prima donna.

When the attic was once more restored to its orderliness she closed the
window and went down-stairs to wrestle with her curls. They were
tangled, but ordinarily she would have been able to braid them into some
semblance of neatness, but the trying experience of the past moments,
the joy of gaining an adopted mother, set her fingers bungling.

"Ach, I can't, I just can't make two braids!" she said at length, ready
to burst into tears.

Then she remembered David. "Mebbe he's on the porch yet. I'll go see
once."

With the narrow brown ribbons streaming from her hand and a hair-brush
tucked under one arm she ran down the stairs. She found David, for once
a gloomy figure, on the back porch, just where she had left him.

"David," she said softly, "will you help me?"

"Why"--his face brightened as he looked at her--"you ain't"--he started
to say "crying"--"you ain't mad at me for getting you into trouble with
Aunt Maria?"

"Ach, no. And I ain't never going to be mad at you now for I just
adopted your mom for my mom--mother. She's going to be my Mother Bab;
she said so."

"What?"

He knitted his forehead in a puzzled frown. Phoebe explained how kind
his mother had been, how she understood what little girls like to do,
how she had promised to be Mother Bab.

"You don't care, Davie, you ain't jealous?" she ended anxiously.

"Sure not," he assured her; "I think it's kinda nice, for she thinks
you're a dandy. But did they haul you over the coals in there?"

"Yes, a little, all but Granny Hogendobler and your mom--Mother Bab, I
mean. Isn't it funny to get a mother when you didn't have one for so
long?"

"Guess so."

"But, David, will you help me? I can't fix my hair and Aunt Maria is so
mad at me she said I can just fix it myself. The plaits won't come right
at all. Will you help me, please?" She asserted her femininity by adding
new sweetness to her voice as she asked the uncommon favor.

"Why"--he hesitated, then looked about to see if any one were near to
witness what he was about to do--"I don't know if I can. I never braided
hair, but I guess I can."

"Be sure you can, David. You braid it just like we braid the daisy stems
and the dandelion stems in the fields. You're so handy with them, you
can do most anything, I guess."

Spurred by her appreciation of his ability he took the brush and began
to brush the tangled hair as she sat on the porch at